Zompist Bboard Again

Oneflesh Social Niches Despite the sound of things, Oneflesh don't actually have a caste system. What they have instead is a system based around the concept of a "social niche" -- a collection of traits and actions associated with some set of field proficiencies and some ranking among peo...

Oneflesh Beliefs I've talked a bit about Oneflesh history and their rigid biological conservatism, which has bled over into other form/function conservatism as well. It's worth making a note about how unusual this is in the Cygnus Pentad -- the free mixing of biological humans, mechanical beings, a...

I'm not a huge sci-fi guy, but this is really cool stuff and a fascinating read. I really appreciate the amount of thought that has gone into this so far. Thanks! Oneflesh These are a bit different. Oneflesh are humans that don't use Newflesh nodes, effectively trapping them in whichever body they ...

So, onto a more in-depth look at the different "races". I'll cover the main racial groupings first and then get into the various types of hybrids (which is what most of the population is. This will probably be a multi-post post -- it's fairly late tonight already and it'll probably also ta...

That being said, I do recall indicators in the Ik'Thulu thread that the inhabitants weren't original to that "world" (not sure "world" really applies in that case, haha), but they weren't quite expanded on. It isn't really relevant in that setting except in very specific circums...

I’m hardly an expert on this, but how can a universe have parabolic geometry? I thought that a space could have spherical (positive curvature), flat (zero curvature) or hyperbolic (negative curvature) geometry, but I haven’t heard of a universe having parabolic geometry. Could you explain what that...

I get a little confused with the sentients. I'm kind of lost with the Newflesh/Oneflesh/etc. (I believe those are regular humans, some kind of Cronenbergian augmented humans that uploads after death?) but I like the thoroughly alien feel. I'll explain those a bit in my next post, but essentially: *...

This isn’t the sort of thing that I usually like, but based on how good your previous Ik'Thulu thread was, I’m really interested in seeing more of this! (By the way, whatever happened to that thread?) Thanks! I'll get back around to the Ik'Thulu thread eventually, especially since there are apparen...

USL & USLP The USL is a set of guidelines for the treatment of sentient life by other sentient life. According to the USL, it stands for "USL Standards & Law" which was chosen to resolve a dispute between the Sents who believed it should be either the "United Sentient's Laws&...

This is some lore for a spacefaring civilization that will probably make its way into a game in a few years (its predecessor game is taking a long long time to develop). Conworld Basics The conworld takes place in a region of space in the Cygnus constellation -- five star systems known as the "...

Lobster = Sea-claw

Next: Elephant

Most of these are rules I try to follow myself, but some of them are abject nonsense, for example this one: For example, in a realistic worldbuilding project, if you have a small island country that you love a lot, and you want it to have a Japan-like culture and a strong economy, and people tell yo...

A primer on Worm Gates The other big piece of Pivotian technology is the "Worm Gate" -- this technology ties into both the instant-transportation Harp Gates and the infinite-measurement Worm Scanners, which I'll cover individually. There are also a lot of varieties of Harp Gates which I'v...

Reviving this. It's been a while, so I'm going to take a bit of a break from Ik'Thulu stuff for the time being. A primer on Wings The people of Ik'Thulu have no wings. The Pivotians, however, find them absolutely essential to traversing the Winged Isles (name of the world). One of the reasons the Ik...

Are keening/yawning/yanking/etc. "real"--that is, are shamans actually accessing a dead person's personality, or is it simply a hallucinogenic ritual believed to do this? Shamanic techniques are very definitely accessing "residue", which is a kind of personality imprint accessib...

I realize the last post was somewhat dense with technical jargon, so I'd like to take a minute to clarify some things: Shamanic Substance Categories Shamanic substances can be roughly separated into four categories: * Light Entheogens -- These make shamanic "passage techniques" like keenin...

I agree with the cat. How would you go about gathering information in such a language? Or do your people just assume things and get corrected? Like, the above sentence could have instead been: It doesn't make sense how they would get information when they needed to learn something. Though your peopl...

Intro to Ik'Thulu religion My next set of updates focuses on Ik'Thulu religion. Ik'Thulu religion is far more diverse and syncretic than Pivotian religion, and has influenced Pivotian religion many many times. They also know a decent amount of Forbidden Lore -- religious knowledge shared with the N...

Ik'Thulu Groups The Ik'thulu can be separated roughly into three broad groups: * The Katar Nen Band is the group most people think of when they mention Ik'Thulu -- this group freely roams the islands, worships Ancestors , is resistant to Pivotian technology and interacts heavily with Pivotians. Thi...

A primer to the Ik'Thulu language The Ik'Thulu language derives from the common tongue spoken by Pivotians and Ik'thulu alike (which I've represented as a particularly agglutinative variant of English with a touch of Hebrew) at various points throughout their history. Originally, it was used in add...